I think HN users might be especially aware of how addicting these can be, so do you take any precautions to help your children avoid falling prey to them?
We have never had limits on anything. Screen time/content unrestricted. Probably dozens of times, maybe hundreds, we have had "the talk" about how there's a lot of weird shit in the world, internet included, and it's better to know about that stuff and how to deal with it than to create a temporary secure enclave at home where it doesn't exist.
We especially didn't want to pawn off our responsibility as parents onto their future 18-year-old college-bound selves to learn how to deal with excesses. Since the moment they could point, they've been given the opportunity to make mistakes with excess. They've fallen thousands of times, we've picked them up thousands of times, and now they're pretty good at not falling.
You can guess that I love CI/CD, stable trunk, etc., in my day job. My attitude as an engineer/parent is you'll never make bugs/threats go away. So make sure you and your team/family are experts at dealing with them while they're fresh and small.
The mother of my kid and I are separated. I wanted to restrict content/screen time, but she gave him unrestricted access to his iPhone and now I feel it can't be undone. He's 13.
I'm mostly worried about his attention span, especially when I watch him use his phone. But then again, maybe this is just a different generation and I must understand that his way of using the internet is different from mine.
Would you share a story of falling/picking them up?
A screen is a great way to amuse a kid while you regain your sanity after a rough day. But so is a playdate with another kid, or a sleepover if they're older. And if your kid went on a playdate or a sleepover, wouldn't you ask how it went? Wouldn't you talk to the other parent(s) about how it went? Wouldn't it be weird if you didn't ever talk about that sleepover? Why should an iPhone be any different?
My point is that a screen isn't a pause button on your parent-child relationship. It's an experience that the kid goes through, separately from you, and it's your duty as a parent to get back in sync again afterward. Sorry to use your kid's mom as a pointed subject here, but it makes all the difference whether she sees the iPhone as an extra parenting responsibility, or a substitute for some of hers. In our case, we didn't demand a full accounting of every one of our kids' clicks. But occasional conversations were expected. (And pro tip for separated parents, these kinds of conversations can also happen... over the phone! On SMS!)
Stories to share... well, I won't get too specific because they're kids and all that, but briefly...
One: the kids all have small savings accounts with even smaller allowances. Twice they've gotten bamboozled by online gaming sites (similar to Club Penguin) into putting in their debit-card number to buy a virtual trinket that then turns into a $expensive/month subscription. Both times they noticed they were suddenly overdrawn, and came to me asking for help. If those payments were tuition in life experience, we got good value for it, because my kids today are pretty good at reading the fine print. And we now have a family legend/parable of Kid #2 buying the $1 powerup that cost him all his savings.
Two: Call of Duty during the pandemic. Self-regulation issues surfaced, and grades slipped. We talked about it and came up with a homework-before-gaming-each-night rule. We (the parents) didn't enforce the rule; that was the kids' job. Grades came back slowly, but the bleeding stopped almost immediately.
Honestly, I sat here for a while trying to think of a zinger of a third story, but most are the same -- the kid walking up to me with a screen in hand, showing me a site or an app, and asking "Dad, is this legit?" and oh god no it isn't and I'm so glad they felt OK asking me about it. I think that's actually the common thread with all these stories: we've been reasonably successful keeping the lines of communication open about their online lives, giving us the opportunity to parent through the teachable moments, rather than preemptively shaming them into dealing with it alone. My kids aren't perfect, but I'm satisfied with how they're prepared for the world, in all its gory detail.
Best of luck with your parenting! If you do it right, your kids will grant you lifetime tenure!
> My point is that a screen isn't a pause button on your parent-child relationship. It's an experience that the kid goes through, separately from you, and it's your duty as a parent to get back in sync again afterward.
Very well said, thank you for sharing. I’ve never considered it like that because it was never my experience, nor one I’ve seen firsthand in others... but it sounds so obvious reading it now. Makes me wish I had more of that growing up. Makes me hope I remember this when I’m a parent.
I'm sorry for your difficult situation. Phones killing attention span is real.
This is an important point. There's a reason that it's well known on any given college campus that the wildest people are the ones with the strictest parents.
To anyone reading this - guide your kids, don't try to lock them down. Obviously what degree of freedom:restriction will be dependent on the kid in question, but be guided by the point above. I don't want to know where I would be right now if I didn't have friends who screwed up their life first and didn't choose to use them as a warning.
E: Added last sentence
Maybe that requires a child having some built in proclivity towards some manner of creative expression or physical activity, who knows.
Also, giving your children unfettered access to the internet is not the same thing as giving them money for a slot machine. They don't have money unless you give it to them. It's not difficult to prevent them from having unlimited access to your credit cards.
Children will grow up into adults that have access to all this stuff anyway. Better to teach and manage excess early then restrict.
You and I, as parents, are both fortunate that our respective children received the gift of constant attention. I fully admit that this experience-everything attitude works a lot better when you're actually there to provide choices, knowledge, feedback, etc. Two working parents who hardly see their kids during the week would have a different perspective.
Before that, we had no limits. After that, self moderation was lost. They would play forever and turn into monsters. The then-7 year old would pee in his pants and keep playing.
I would set the limit at "you have to do something other than school and tv/internet/gaming in your day, on most days."
Nowadays, the only thing that works for me is to print what I want to read, turn off phone and computer, restrict internet access by turning off router, putting the router in hardest to reach places and lay down to read.
See but I don't think you'd be able to do that if you hadn't the experience of living without. Like you literally wouldn't even consider it an option.
Also you may be somewhere on the ADD spectrum. Worth looking into if this becomes a problem for you.
I think it's better if we just admit that these systems are built to be addictive instead of pretending we can just "zen" ourselves away from it.
Realistically, like a lot of addictive things, it would be better off if I nevers started.
All of regulations and moderation go to shit the moment one (as an adult) realizes that there is no "real consequence" for unlimited use. The "real consequence" is only what one puts one's mind to be.
(Losing job because of internet addiction? Nvm, find a different one. Getting overweight? It's a silent killer and the effects are years away, plus you get to shop for new clothes. )
The other part of the equation: The internet is an important aspect of the current generation's identity and culture. What seems like addiction to us could very well be our children's identity, lifestyle. The comparison to TVs is flawed because TV is not social. The unhealthy aspects have to be spoken about in the same vein as drinking and drugs, but any kind of limit-setting that doesn't acknowledge this might push children away from conversation.
There is an hilarious episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that goes into this with refreshing honesty.
I am not a parent, so maybe don't listen to me, but if I were (especially to boys), I would try to deeply instill a value of responsibility into them.
Boys are naturally going to have a higher tolerance for risk, and that can be a very good thing, but it needs to be directed and they need to learn to differentiate good risks from bad ones.
But more generally, building up an identity of being responsible and showing what is expected of them as a child, family member, citizen, human being, etc. will hopefully mean they will do what needs to get done when it needs to be done. Try to get them to ask themselves "what's the responsible thing to do here" and "why is that the responsible thing to do".
idk, maybe that's super obvious. Sorry for posting my naive opinion.
from the perspective of a woman, I missed the possibility to make dumb mistakes because "responsibility" (and not even because my parents taught or encpuraged it, but from friends and family's pressure). Let your kids make dumb stuff and dumb mistakes, please.
The base state of the child is absolutely evolutionary (at a population level): male children are less responsible/compliant and female children are more responsible/compliant from the outset.
This makes girls easy to (even accidentally) make responsible.
Teachers and parents generally easily spend 10x to 100x the effort trying to make boys responsible but do not succeed at nearly the same rates by the same ages. Girls learn faster.
you meant mature faster? probably until the mid 20s where gap closes, I guess.
This means there are more male extreme athletes and entrepreneurs, but also more inmates and gambling addicts.
I don't doubt that it worked for you, but I wonder whether this is a good approach.
You say you never had limits on anything. Say one of your kids tells you he wants to trying heroin a bit. Would you let him?
Now, obviously mobile phones aren't as addictive as heroin and the consequences of failing to control yourself aren't as bad either, but they're still extremely addictive. They're addictive enough that _most people_ struggle to control their impulse to take their phone out every time there's even 10 seconds of downtime. I was at a playground a couple of days ago, and literally every parent there other than me was scrolling their phone while their kids where playing.
> Probably dozens of times, maybe hundreds, we have had "the talk" about how there's a lot of weird shit in the world
Another observation is that you seem to be responding to the question of "how do you deal with your kids being exposed to nasty stuff out there", where the question is really about addiction.
So let me ask you explicitly: When there's a bit of downtime, do your kids reach for the phone? Follow up question: how many hours a day do you estimate they spend staring at their phone?
I'm skeptical that your approach is a good one because these days people who aren't addicted to mindlessly scrolling their phone are the exception rather than the rule.
EDIT: To add some more...
A great example of a victim is my girlfriend. Her parents also didn't prohibit much from her. They've had many "talks" with her too about how there's good things and bad things in the world. But guess what, phones didn't exist when she was a kid so her parents didn't tell her to be careful with phones. She slowly started using more and more. Nowadays she spends 2-3 hours a day in between dinner and bed scrolling her phone. When I point this out to her she says "I'm tired, I just wanna relax". I have the firm conviction that telling a child "this is dangerous stuff, you'll get addicted, do NOT play on this" will reduce the probability of this happening later in life, because you might "catch yourself" using too much earlier in the process.
| "Dad, what do you think about heroin?"
| "If you go near that stuff, you'll be grounded for a month."
| "Thanks, Dad." (proceeds to try heroin)
In the time I typed this, probably 1,000 kids around the world had the very same conversation with a parent about various difficult subjects including drug use. That's 1,000 missed opportunities for parents to have real conversations with their children.
I have a few thoughts about the rest of your comment.
First, you're defining "addiction" very broadly. It's hard to reconcile why your girlfriend is a "victim," but "literally every parent" on the playground was doing the same thing. At a certain point, behaviors become norms. If phones didn't exist, what would those parents on the playground be doing instead? Probably not heroin, but probably not work that society highly values, either. And nothing so extreme that it's my business to judge them.
Second, it's very difficult to address your "the question is really about addiction" point without conceding a false premise. My comment wasn't about how I deal with it; it was about how to prepare my children to deal with it. Which absolutely is about addiction, or rather about avoiding addiction. (To be clear, I'm talking about addiction in the classic sense that causes a person to make destructive life choices to feed their addiction, and absolutely not about the "addiction" that declares that there is a problem with a parent's manner of sitting on a bench on a sunny day in a park.)
If OP were asking how to stop mobile-phone usage, I'd have ignored the post entirely, because in my opinion that's a misguided goal. OP asked "do you take any precautions to help your children avoid falling prey to [internet addiction]?" That's a very different question. And my answer was to teach my children not to become prey.
Yeah but from your answers it looks like you failed at that. All your example interactions seem to come from kids that can't take their eyes off the screen.
I mean you can say what you want about it to them, I'm still not sure I'd give my kids unlimited access to junk and hope they're cool to just be ok with it?
I had zero restrictions on my internet acess growing up, I was also told about excesses and I still blow way too much time on HN, YouTube and Instagram, so I'm not sure it really works to just have the talk?
The question then becomes how do you develop self moderation, which has been a question for at least the last 2,400 years with the socratic "how to achieve a good life" (by having an inner life) and the various "religions of the book" which are a proxy to this question, sprinkling in with a forklift supernatural beliefs (the good life is the one devoted to the God superclass, which has private, unknown methods to solve the confusion of reinforcement).
Coming to think of it, it is probably important if the child does not see you as a God superclass: they will try to rely on themselves (although it is a hard game to balance, not to be too traumatic), and they will be less inclined to rebel against you, achieving both their own personhood, but also being set up to follow your example.
Like for some kids, having to leave a fun play date at their friends house because they have school the next day is crushing enough but probably a good lesson in self moderation and preparedness. That's probably a simpler way to teach self-moderation rather than, here is a bag of cocaine, try not to eat all of it please.
"You see billy, there is a company who is out to get you by stealing all your attention and ruining your life by maximizing profits" is probably a bit complicated for a child.
Also I don't think adults are great at overcoming all their weaknesses, for example, I absolutely love chocolate, so much so that if it's in the house I wish ravish it. So what I do is, I don't have chocolate in the house and it's problem solved.
For some kids not having you tube in their face is probably similar to not having chocolate in the house?
There is a joke: how do you stop a 30 year old man from beating his wife? You hug him when he is 7. How do you stop a 7 year old from being a brat throwing tantrums for chocolate and YouTube? You control your chocolate/YouTube/etc. intake when they are 1 days old.
If parents solved all their problems with the kid by shoving the phone in their hands ["so that brat would finally shut the fuck up"] then of course.
The generation raising children now may not fully understand how critical technology will be in your child's everyday life. You can't just avoid tech, it's literally how every job gets done now, how every leisurely activity is organized or even operated. It's everywhere, unlike chocolate, which can more or less be entirely described as a needless luxury.
This isn't "chocolate" it's "literacy", and by limiting your child's access to it, you're limiting their ability to grow fluent in this new language.
Yes, there are drawbacks and problems, but those will be valuable lessons to learn.
As a consequence I steered clear of all physical addiction and never gambled, but spent countless hours on the net without it creating a problem, until years later (earlier this year) where it all compounded into a nice pile of "not being able to do much beside scrolling social media".
Sure, this would be considered the "excess", but I'm not sure if it's the kind that children should be made to deal with at such an age in such high volumes.
Wouldn't the same logic apply to drugs?
Me and my friends were over 20 years old when social media arrived and it still changed a few of them for the worse. It's a source of suffering for them and it's plain as day from the outside.
I'd advocate for letting them grow up as much as possible before having to deal with that crap while constantly discussing the dangers and negative incentives of the platforms as well as many content producers.
There are tons of articles that say screen time is bad, social media is bad, etc etc... and I suppose you can always find some expert to support those claims, but in terms of actual scientific research, actual experiments, the fear of social media and Internet addiction in general has no more basis today than addiction to TV or video games or even music had in the past, and yes, "experts" in the past went after music as well claiming that it corrupted young kids minds.
* Maryanne Wolf * Cal Newport * Jaron Lanier * Studies conducted by Facebook and brought to public attention by Frances Haugen
Not all are writing about kids specifically but rather humans in general. There are also plenty of psychotherapists specializing in internet addiction, you can look through some of their web pages to see what they are dealing with. I'm from a small European country, I'd recommend looking into local professionals.
It's true that there is a lot of hysteria and speculation and the grand experiment is still running. I admit I'm also biased by what I see in grown ups around me and by my own experiences. The apps and games our kids use are designed to make them addicted. And wasn't it in Irresistible by Adam Alter that managers of companies like Facebook and similar heavily regulate their kids screen times?
I'm not advocating for zero screen time. There are official recommendations from institutes of developed countries and I lean on those. I believe in limits on time and content and media education. They can also learn to deal with something dangerous slowly, they don't have to crash a thousand times.
I got to pick what I watched and when; I just got 30 minutes or an hour a day. I mostly tried to catch the latest Dragon Ball Z episode.
The general strictness of my parents lead to severe rebellion, and that got me into all sorts of trouble (so it definitely wasn’t all a good thing). Now that I’ve matured a bit, I enjoy not having much of a TV habit (I find that I self-titrate internet content in a healthy way as well). I’m actually pretty grateful for the limits.
I don’t have kids, and I don’t know what I would do regarding this posted question, but I thought that I would share that I have very positive feelings concerning my parents’ decision to impose a limit on TV consumption time. I filled the rest of my time reading books, and that’s a very fulfilling time-sink to this day.
Also relevant: I think a lot of the streaming-video content available today (Netflix and others) has a lot more intrinsic value than most of the TV content when I was young. There are so many brilliant writers producing theses shows nowadays that my parents’ sentiment may not really apply to all the content. Even something like Cocomelon (we put it on in social settings if someone’s got their kids with them) is just better than Rugrats as far as providing entertaining wholesome/halfway-informative content.
I don't think you can draw the conclusion that this is because of your childhood restrictions. I have not watched TV in ~10 years, and most of my friends don't have a TV, but I have never had any restrictions. I had the TV on in the background for 8+ hours a day when I was a kid. I don't think there is any correlation at all.
Of course, it also seems to be for much younger children than something like Rugrats, so maybe that's where this reaction of mine is coming from.
I think this contributed greatly to them having all kinds of mental problems. My other children will not have personal devices, but rather dumb phones and a family computer they can use that is in a central place in the house. Until they turn 16.
Tongue in cheek: Based on my experience I now think that giving children free access to the net is roughly as good parenting as providing them a sack of cocaine would be.
My three kids are each unique in different ways, which confounds any attempt to draw predictive conclusions about one parenting style vs another. I can only say what I have done as a parent, and I was happy elsewhere in this thread to share anecdotal mistakes the kids have made along the way. But claiming credit for any positive outcomes would be "results-oriented thinking," as professional poker players warn.
For what it's worth, I haven't been on social media in any meaningful way for probably 10 years. Even my rare tweeting is likely to end given that the guy running that company has spectacularly lost his marbles. My ex-wife and wife are similar. We have no dogma against social media; it's just not very interesting. I work hard at my tech job, but I still make dinner every night for my family. None of this is really for my family or kids in any altruistic sense; it's just how I like to live my life. It's a lot easier to spout a certain parenting philosophy when your own life, and those of your partner(s), match. (I hope this isn't coming off as horribly judgmental; I'm merely admitting that if I had a "do as I say, not as I do" attitude, I'm sure my experience would be a lot rougher.)
We've read to her since day one and she loves books now and her spoken/listening language skills are way ahead for her age. Wife speaks to her in her native language so she's growing up bilingual too. Wife takes her to parks, mommy and me classes where they have story time, sing, physical activities, arts and crafts and free play with toys. At home, we expect her to be able entertain herself with toys, books, backyard, etc.
It's not perfect, but at a parenting class, I heard screens described as crack cocaine for kids, so I'm keeping mine away from that shit for as long as I can. She seems to be doing fine without them and though she's curious when she sees one, she doesn't ask/whine for them.[0] I don't even plan to expose educational app games to her. So many other richer ways to learn in 3D space. I highly doubt she'll fall behind for lack of exposure to screens.
[0] The most screen exposure she gets is with others. People these days don't seem to be able to socialize and interact without their phones.
An adult can excuse themselves, step out for some fresh air, go to the bathroom, or even go home. Knowing how and when to do that is an important skill.
Kids need that outlet too, and they need their parents to be attuned to their needs and help them manage.
If a kid is melting down at a restaurant, they need help from an adult who ought to have some idea what the child needs and how to provide it.
Too many parents seem to think their own desire for an uninterrupted meal is more important than their child's basic biological need to be able to get out of an overwhelming situation. It's not fair to trap someone somewhere they don't want to be and then blame them for becoming upset.
There is no question that iPads are the easiest solution, but it’s rarely the best solution, and it’s certainly not necessary. Humanity survived for thousands of years without having iPads for kiddos at restaurants.
Thing is that statement applies to a lot of the adults (with phones) in the restaurant too. It's sad and telling.
Mine were very happy to draw, read picture books, etc. at that age.
If friends expect my son to act as a dog, it’s their wrong.
As a parent of a 3 year old in the UK, with friends and restaurants we'd just talk to them or they'd colour, read, etc. Maybe cultural, but it would be seen it as pretty unusual/rude to have a kid with an iPad at a table in a restaurant; although I agree it's a lot to ask of 3 year old to sit there for hours.
Could this be just her personality and we got lucky? Possibly. But I'm willing to bet it also has to do with her not being used to screens and instead being used to focusing on the environment in front of and around her. There are studies about the association between screen time and ADHD symptoms.
He also sits with us, eats with us. Sometimes we do bring a toy car, or pencils for him to draw. But that’s it.
Great side effect is that he eats everything. From olives to onions. He sees us eating and he mimics. That’s the whole parenting game imho.
I don’t believe you are lucky. You’ve simply set the standard for your child, by _not_ providing a screen for every situation.
Well done:-)
Brilliant! Way better than screens in my opinion.
And youtube.
It’s literally the only way to get him to sit still for any amount of time (that I’ve found anyway), so that’s what restaurant time has become.
Doesn’t mean he always wants to or gets to watch a video, especially if he can run about outside instead, but if we’re eating in a restaurant that’s otherwise dreadfully boring to him, yeah.
Now if outside the restaurant context, you were constantly giving him Youtube time in lieu of real world activity, I would encourage different behavior.
Like you, I try to foster in my kids an interest in everything around them. Absolutely everything is an interesting topic of discussion. Or a way to build an observational challenge - can you point to something purple? Or triangle-shaped? What instruments can you hear in this music?
There are a lot of great replies to my question. I'm happy I asked it.
My kids are really well behave in restaurant and never ask for screens (I'm not even totally sure they would think of it). The trick for us is regularly flowing food, allowing them to bring bring a small toy, coloring utensils, and honestly just engage with them. That could be through visual and word games or just talking to them and asking the right questions. It's hard work, not every meal out is perfect, and sometimes it feel like it would just be easier to give them the phone. But I'm happy that we've taken this stance. I can't tell you how many times a restaurant owner or a nearby table has said how well behaved our kids are.
What is your plan for Grandparents, babysitters, childcare, or even the school system to help maintain no screens?
No screens seems awfully privileged in a way... maybe you're just Bill Gates
Around the world it's quite common to have an extended family serve as a support network, especially around childcare. You're right though that maintaining no-screen when your child is with others is harder though, and finding how people deal with that was my main motivation for making this thread.
Not impossible.
https://www.businessinsider.com/screen-time-limits-bill-gate...
I think it's quite brash to say that it's "privileged" to raise children with no screens. Would you like to elaborate? People certainly existed without them.
I understand that not everyone can live on one income. But more often I see in my circles people that can make it work, but choose not too because they don't want to make that career/financial sacrifice. Instead both parents work and send their kids to daycare. Of course that's totally their choice. I've made a different choice and perhaps this is an unpopular opinion this day and age, but I think it's the best choice if you can make it work financially and are willing to put in the effort that it entails.
I will cop to allowing him to watch a playlist of nature videos I’ve downloaded and watched through beforehand, on an old laptop, at times when I need to do something urgently without toddler assistance.
Otherwise, he can spend a good hour at the sink “washing” dishes with a trickle of water or attempting to sweep (ignoring his actual toys entirely!)
My husband grew up without a TV in the house in 70s-80s West Germany. His parents eventually got one, but it sits in a side room and is usually just turned on for the 8 o’clock news.
I asked my mother-in-law about this sacrifice on her part. Her answer? She didn’t think she’d have time to watch everything her kids were watching to make sure it was appropriate, so she took Alexander’s solution to that Gordian Knot - they simply sold their TV once their first child was a few months old.
My in-laws’ generation was glad to get enough to eat as children in postwar Germany; a TV was an unimaginable luxury until they were in their teens. She didn't feel like she was depriving her children of anything important.
My husband and his sister weren’t forbidden to watch TV at others’ houses, or to go to the movies. Neither of them ever wanted to buy one for themselves as teenagers or university students, and today, they both keep very quiet houses.
Result? They talk a lot when not sitting around reading. Guests at my in-laws are offered the contents of the decently-stocked magazine stand, a rotation of coffee table books, or if they’d like something from the bookshelves.
I grew up in a stereotypical American house with the TV on all the time, but started escaping it early to hole up in my room with a computer long before most people had internet access at home.
In some ways, I feel more at ease visiting my husband’s family than my own, despite a bit of a language barrier.
One might say there’s less of a lifestyle barrier.
My husband's family has much less money than my American relatives, so privilege has nothing to do with the fact that my German niece got her first dumbphone at 11, puts her school laptop away when her homework is finished and picks up one of her craft projects, and my American nephew has had his own iPad since he was 3, his own TV and AppleTV since he was about 6, and now a Roblox addiction.
Wholly and completely resent their parents. Growing up in the later 00s/10s, right as stuff like SMS and especially "social group by text message" came along, it absolutely stunted their ability to make friends.
What it did was disconnect them from their distant peers and meant that making friends outside of their immediate school peers was basically impossible. It also landed them an extremely deep rut of depression, causing them to spend their free time for years sinking into alt-right stuff that actively preys on "people sheltered from social media as kids".
Everything in the under-18 space is organized in real time online behind adults backs. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Kids plot against the adults. The fact of the matter is that social media is the way we engage with so much art, culture, and society that these sorts of schools hurt kids in the long run.
I leave you with the track Turntable Winding Down [0] from the album Public Domain. The intro/outro were stripped when the band re-released the album "legit", but Archive.org has the original because, of course they do.
[0] https://archive.org/details/TryadTryadPublicDomain/Tryad__17...
I'm really encouraged by these Luddite Teens. https://archive.ph/gsqDH
As they grow up, we'll explain why we're doing this. We want them to grow up with the experience that you don't need social media, etc to live a fulfilling life. And we model to them that phones are a very useful communication device and some apps can be very useful like Uber, but it is not to be an entertainment device.
> social media is the way we engage with so much art, culture, and society
I plan to take my kids to museums, plays, concerts etc instead.
At some point, they will get in touch with media one way or the other. In our case, once they get into school, they'll be using ipads anyway. So, I agree that for very little children, there's is absolutely no need to expose them to any screen time, but at some point as they get older, they will need to learn how to use phones and media.
We're still very restrictive with screen time, though. It's more like a treat that they get to play with a device for 30 minutes (which I, honestly, find already too long, but I'm not a single parent).
What happens doing those years has outsized effects on the child the rest of their life.
So yes, I won't be able to shield her from screens forever. But I can still do my best to set her up for success and prevent her from being a screen junkie.
My suggestion would be to listen to your kid when they inevitably ask for access to these things, and while you should acquiesce every request, you shouldn't dismiss them out of hand either, and should take their reasoning into account.
Currently have a strained at best relationship with much of my family for reasons strongly related to this mindset.
E: Moved the last paragraph of this comment to https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=34022364 where it makes more sense in context.
but I am curious if there is inspiration on how you keep your kids entertained at restaurants. So many parents just find an ipad to be a sedative that its basically a baby sitter, they know its bad but are still in need of a quick solution and then 3 years go by before revisiting it and they don't need it any more.
How do you handle that? Bored kid at a restaurant, possibly misbehaving.
So far it's been very effective. My kid has no interest in screens and likes to do real world stuff instead.
I realize I won't be able to shield her from them forever nor would that be a good idea. But these are literally formative years. From age 0 to 3, the human brain grows to 80% of its adult size, 90% by 5. What happens during these years have an outsized impact on their rest of their lives. Let's set them up for success as much as possible. That's why it's been zero screen from day one and as long as possible. When will I introduce screens? Don't know. Will cross that bridge when we get there. Right now, we're doing great with no screens.
> How do you handle that? Bored kid at a restaurant, possibly misbehaving.
Answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34021771
> From age 0 to 3, the human brain grows to 80% of its adult size, 90% by 5. What happens during these years have an outsized impact on their rest of their lives.
Do you have a study that affirms these observations are related?
We know that something has an outsized cognitive impact the rest of a person's life at these ages, do you know that brain matter growth size thingy neuron something something is that thing?
Since last year as things have normalized, we basically restarted a bunch of their sports activities. Both kids had reading requirements from school and both seem to be in a spot where they will read before bed by themselves. The elder one reads quite a bit, probably around 1-1.5 hrs at night. The younger kid about 20-25 mins. They still do about 5-8 hrs of screen time each week. Still too much in my opinion but they also do a lot of stuff not on screen.
I still haven’t given them phones or devices. I myself have an iPhone-6 so not much runs on it either. But as the big kid starts being more independent I think a phone is going to be necessary.
My advice, if any, is keep non screen activities and person to person activity a priority. But keep in mind that her friends may get video games a lot earlier and they do form peers online which translate into peers in person.
Also, once they finally learn to read themselves, I predict they will love the independence of being able to pick up their favorite books to read whenever they want. And we'll love that too for multiple reasons. :)
By letting a baby/toddler have unrestricted access to screens, you are helping to wire neuronic paths in their brain to need that dopamine hit.
Perhaps there will be a time that I can trust my child to not overdose on screens, but now is definitely not the time.
Zooming out, I think there are fundamental parenting philosophy differences between me and the commenter. I believe the parent should take a very active role in shaping the character and habits of a child. This means restricting things I think are bad for them, discipline when they do wrong and this is the most important, convincing them without a doubt they you love them more than anything in the world. In this way, you give the child a solid core of security and confidence and shape their habits.
To me, the commenter seems to be advocating for letting the child make all the decisions or at least significant ones like screen time. I'm for letting children make increasingly important, age appropriate decisions as they mature and are ready. But when they are under my house, they need to understand two things, that I love them fiercely and I'm their authority figure.
> brain grows to 8% of its adult mass
should be 80%
First, you MUST set limits on everything addictive to children in your house including the internet. Limit the content they can access and the place and time they can use it. You can adjust the limits, but never remove them.
Second, if they're old enough, explain the concept of addiction to them. Here is a perfect video to do that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUngLgGRJpo A child will understand exactly what addiction means after watching this video.
Third, show them that you also have limits on your own tech usage. They might not be the same limits you put on them, but you have limits. They will understand this way that limits are not something they can "grow out of" and are part of being an adult.
Last, when they do break the rules, don't shame them for it and don't give them approval for it either. Make it clear that you still love them and the rules are still in place.
Good luck.
From my perspective, children watch what you do more than what you say. If you tell them the internet is dangerous but then leave it wide open, you're sending mixed messages to them and they're not going to take your advice seriously.
The point is not to seal them off in a bubble. I talk about all kinds of hard realities with my kids. And they're exposed to hard realities when I'm not there. The point is that your actions have to match your statements.
> Probably dozens of times, maybe hundreds, we have had "the talk" about how there's a lot of weird shit in the world, internet included, and it's better to know about that stuff and how to deal with it than to create a temporary secure enclave at home where it doesn't exist.
Hundreds of times? That sounds terribly embarrassing, doesn't it?
And why wouldn't I want my home to be a sanctuary from the weird shit out there? Isn't the point of a home a place you can kick off your shoes and relax?
> They've fallen thousands of times, we've picked them up thousands of times, and now they're pretty good at not falling.
Thousands??? He has to accept the possibility that they've just gotten better at hiding their vices. That's what teenagers are good at.
This kind of supports my assumption that his kids aren't taking his rules OR his advice seriously.
Give them a game on their tablet and they are quickly collaborating on it. Give them a show and they will go see what the other person is watching. After not too long (an hour or two) they are completely done and doing something else.
But youtube is different. They can sit alone, in a corner, slack jawed, for 8 hours per day, only watching youtube, as they respond to all questions with only a vague grunt.
I am, in general, a fairly permissive and liberal-minded parent. I had to put my foot down and have just disabled the site on the devices they use.
It makes me sad because I know if they were directed to the right kinds of videos they could learn all kinds of things and be inspired by the creativity of the folks behind them. This is not what comes up in the feed and the content that they've become most interested in is the mental equivalent of eating off-brand Oreos for every meal. Hard pass.
great idea!
Oldest goes down rabbit hole of topics of interest - benign useless filler stuff, e.g. mostly pro sports commentary, random things like Disney ride trivia, and other random pop-culture filler. If left unchecked, i wouldn’t be surprised if they spent 8+ hours on YouTube. If moderated, YouTube gives them a fair amount of stuff to talk and connect with others about in real life. Overall impact: neutral to slightly positive if moderated to <1h/day. Food/drink equivalent: Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzel pieces (a few are great, but then you can’t stop and you end up eating 1500 calories and everything tastes wrong for 24h)
Younger teen: will consume insane amounts of gaming videos, most of the creators border on toxic personalities. We’ve banned a number of channels for them, but they find other shitty personalities. I can’t stand the content they consume, but I chalk a fair bit of that to my ignorance about teen culture and mostly grit my teeth. Covid was the worst. I hate YouTube because of their content choices. However, it does provide a small basis of connection to their group of friends. [edit: I also stupidly made a deal that w/ straight A’s I won’t be overly restrictive, which they’ve upheld, sigh] Overall impact: toxic to the point where every month or two I’m convinced to ban YouTube across every device in the house. Food/drink equivalent: Natty Light that’s barely chilled.
Pre-teen: by choice, they spend ~3/4 of their YouTube time learning new skills or facts. Mostly learning specific techniques in the iPad app Procreate, acrylic painting (irl), a ton of educational videos about wildlife/animals they love, etc. But more significantly, their YouTube use has created the reflex to “search first” whenever facing a knowledge/skill gap, then ask for help. They’re the only reason i don’t straight up block YouTube at the network level, for all devices. Overall impact: very positive. Food/drink equivalent: natto and rice.
I think if the parent thinks the agreement they made was stupid and is now a detriment to their child's well-being, they should edit it.
Acknowledge having made a mistake. Don't pretend you were right from the start. That's an important part of the learning process, and your kid needs to know it's safe to make mistakes and adjust course later, that you're not stuck with something just because of one decision in the past.
Be clear on what concerns you and why (especially be sure that it's a concern for the child's well-being and not some need of your own that you're trying to meet by changing your kid) and have a conversation with this young person about it.
This is a growth opportunity, not a lost cause.
Does it? I feel like my son has been watching essentially the same 20-25 videos over and over again. Of course his youtube time is limited, but it doesn’t seem like it suggests anything but his three favorite channels.
This is a problem for me too (an adult), I'm getting stronger at turning it off, but it's poison.
The content is absolute shit too. The YouTube algorithm steers them toward these weird repetitive videos and obnoxious fast-chattering gamer channels. There's a lot of interesting and enriching stuff on YouTube but the algorithm never steers them toward it.
You might want to preemptively ban TikTok and Instagram too. I've been told by many parents they are absolute poison for teens. I've looked at them a bit and TikTok in particular is shockingly addictive even for adults. I was just checking it out and before I knew it I'd been scrolling for 45 minutes watching weird videos from randos. Banned it at the network level already just in case.
We have really created a monster here with this addictionware stuff. It's not great for adults but for kids it's really toxic.
So like, add a network filter for gore/porn up to a certain age, and try to do a good job of showing how to invest their time as a reward function rather than the instant gratification path.
But ultimately, babying them will prevent them from growing, and the moment they get out of your clutches (how they'll see it) they'll binge/overindulge and not have anyone to stop the irreversible mistakes from happening.
Limiting technology access creates a perverse relationship between the kid and tech. If you want your kid to see technology as a tool, not as a reward, you can't treat it like a reward. It's super easy, but it sets the wrong example.
I think of it similar to the issue of college students and drinking. Freshman with highly restrictive parents are at a greater risk of getting alcohol poisoning because they try to "make up for lost time" or something when they move out.
My parents tried to limit a bunch of stuff in our house while I was growing up, and it never ever worked. Once I figured out self-regulation I was much better off.
I was a computer addicted kid since I was about 8, when parents bought me a computer in 1995. When faster internet came, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was on the internet nonstop. And later on social media - LiveJournal, Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, but also some local servers that people here won’t know.
I don’t think it hurt me that much? Now I am a developer and making more money than most of my friends from that time, that were not sitting all day on computer.
So… it would be kind of hypocritical from me to restrict my kids doing the same? I don’t know
My kids are still too young to understand computers though (1 and 3). So let’s see
It makes me wonder how the shift towards mobile and consoles will affect how useful internet addictions can be. I would have never become a developer if I remained a console or mobile gamer.
The communities that I was in are still around but I'm unsure whether young people will actually find them. Why learn how to mod games when you can scroll tiktok, browse reddit, and watch youtube for the entire day.
especially games, modern games aren't as supportive to modders than older games - it's more profitable to not provide modding tools and just to run any multiplayer servers officially with microtransactions.
Linux? Cool let's install and play around for a while. How many fun logos can I make in GIMP for my cheesy geocities site? Oh half-life comes with a level builder, let's build some levels!
As time goes on, I end up exploring less and less and now just absorb media when I'm not working. And it's not even fun or satisfying, but the dopamine hit is easy. It could be just partially growing up and having real responsibility and a full time job, but I feel the content delivery bears some of the blame.
I'm not sure if you could re-create the early web experience. It might be possible with a VERY highly curated twitter feed, but it would still be challenging, as the medium doesn't promote the same type of long term engagement as the older style PhpBB forums did.
My son has a friend who can watch YouTube and Tiktok for hours without supervision. When he comes home I freak out: he gets bored watching a movie, music videoclips are too long, and if you try to read a short story at bedtime he doesn’t even listen to you.
It’s not about using computers and participating in online communities but undermining their attention, vocabulary, etc.
I also have this other observation. If you really get into classical music, jazz and to some extent blues/bluegrass... modern pop songs just sound like crap and boring.
I feel this might be a 'look at me I'm so smart thing'. I've enjoyed classical music and jazz and blues/bluegrass, and partake in playing all of those. I also enjoy pop music. There's nothing inherently bad about pop music. Like jazz and classical, it's based on a simple circle of fifths progression. In fact, most modern pop is more harmonically and rhythmically complex than classical music.
In the your era there just weren't the sort of a/b tested hooks to get you in, behavioral techniques to keep you engaged and dark patterns to prevent you from leaving.
gotta watch out for your kids. Get them outside, with fresh air and exercise.
However, the modern internet and current trend is much more consumption based and non-technical than it used to be. Toxic content, communities, and celebrities were always around (and always will be) but with so much more overall volume you can easily become encased in a bubble of negativity and hate.
I would curate and limit access for children into their teenage years, say 14 or 15. After that I’d just want to know what they’re generally up to so I could step in if, for instance, I had a son who started following Andrew Tate.
Its interesting to see what I believe to be a generational divide in these comments.
I'm 28. My parents limited my internet and gaming time when I was younger and it mostly just caused resentment and anger at what I believed to be their controlling behaviour. I couldn't wait to move out. When I did move out in University the freedom I spent too much time on the things I wasn't allowed to do before and my grades suffered for it.
I think a lot of comments here have very draconian policies that aren't going to work out the way the parents intended it. I think the harder and more desirable way is to somehow teach them to manage their own time but I have no idea how.
A while back I saw a ~5 year old watch the entirety of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5dUzc476Ws (pick any random 10 seconds to get the idea)
My spouse and I discussed it later in private, and we were both horrified. In the moment we had both had visceral little gasp reactions to how bad it was. We were until then only aware of a problem to the extent of "my kids are staring at screens all day", which does of course sound like 90s parents. The real problem is that some significant portion of those screens are now putting out absolutely horrifying cognition poison.
Where I went to college though did not have internet access in the dorms! That was a mistake. There were schools I could have attended that did. I did spend a lot of time in the computer lab but I think I would have benefited from a direct link.
Also I was able to books without poisonous addictive social media apps and YouTube distracting me at every instance. I doubt I've really learned much or anything from social media. In fact I'd say it's highly one sided relationship where I'm the loser.
You can't compare your own childhood to this, I don't think we even get it. You have to set limits both on time and content.
For 10 examples you're getting a 25-cent coin from a coin dispenser. You can keep it or you can use this money to buy Internet access. My OpenWrt router is connected straight to coin acceptor. For one coin you're getting 30 minutes of Internet on all devices (iPad and PC).
Since it's all automated I don't need to involve too much into education process. Math score in school has greatly improved, the kiddo solved thousands of examples.
Coin dispenser is proprietary (found on ebay, one of popular model), so I literally had to hack the USB protocol. The coin acceptor had no USB interface, so I had to introduce one. I've connected this USB to my OpenWrt 32-bit router, which is also ARM - so I had to hack some USB libraries along the way so my binaries can work with USB right from OpenWrt.
One of the advantages - there is no such thing as unlimited Internet. You always need to do some work to get it. Another one - there is interruption moment when it's over. There are lots of other good things. Like you can control the number of examples that needs to be solved. How difficult they are. Kiddo also understands what money is and how easy it is to spend money and how hard it is to earn.
I'm looking for co-founder to turn it into a business.
But I think even simple button that activates Internet for 30 minutes would work, since it introduces interruption between "consuming flow".
I also made the Unity app to support 3D animations, and I'm planning to improve it. For example, it's easier to explain what "30" is with 3 rows of 10 balls (each row is 5 + 5). Animation for subtraction is different, I experimented, added 3D kittens running around, VFX effects, and so on. So kids also have a visual representation of math operations.
I'm ready to share/demonstrate the implementation to folks in South San Francisco or nearby. I would even Open Source it if there is enough interest, but can't guarantee it's gonna be super quick without some help from interested enthusiasts.
In the future I'm planning to improve math engine and visual part, so it's easier to understand what math is. There are many ideas on how to automate, since coin dispenser and acceptor support all kinds of coins.
I have a quick and a bit outdated video (in Russian) on my Youtube channel here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVyFVhoAe5g
Funny anecdote happened one week ago, when child got back from school and said "Hey dad, look what I've got". He had 100-dollar bill in his hand, I'm not even kidding. He said "I traded some Pokemon cards at school"...
For me, social media is an absolute No and I will fight my kids until I can't. For example, there is no way I am going to let my 8 year old do Tick Tok or Snapchat and what not. It is way too toxic even for adults let alone a child who has not fully developed mentally and emotionally yet. However, we restrict by talking to them openly about why we don't think it is a good idea and then show them that we are still giving them these other freedoms. Most kids appreciate that if you are honest instead of just saying No.
I don't think you can restrict using apps or parental controls because those can be bypassed once kids get smarter. We have 0 parental controls on the devices they use. I want my kids to learn the difference between good and bad by having access and freedom but the right information.
On the flip side, we don't restrict them from doing iPad/laptop to play certain types of games (.e.g word puzzle) or even minecraft etc. We don't restrict them from doing things on internet like google slides for creativity etc. We don't restrict them from watching Youtube or movies for kids under our supervision.
The other thing is to not give them too much opportunity to do devices/internet. If they are busy with an activity, they don't care. If they have nothing to do, they "get bored" and want to be on their devices. So create enough opportunity for them to do activities ideally something that doesn't involve internet/devices etc. So far, our kids have been very good with boundaries and the freedom they have to do things. I know that if you restrict everything, that won't work.
Obviously though, you're not going to protect your children from themselves. IMO, the best you can do as a parent is teach them healthy means of self-expression.
One of quality differences that separate good social behaviors and addictions is that the latter is boring. I personally couldn’t get hooked with TikTok, not for fears of addiction but because it wasn’t much rewarding to me. If someone is stuck repeating actions lacking in diversity or generally boring things, even if it seemed stimulating on surface, maybe there could be some other reasons than that the machine’s just too toxic.
This isn’t to say that parents “failing” to save kids have to feel any sense of guilt or responsibility - addictions are real - but it does seem to me that a lot of internet addicted self-taught flamewars expert people (bad bad thing) have episodes with picky, overly interfering, in-satisfiable, jealousy, or sometimes downright insane parents.
Maybe that plays a role in addiction, maybe having happy and stable parents help in kids growing better.
(I wish I couldn’t recall my then-parent-ish holding chef’s knife at 5 years old me with the door to my back)
The television was removed from the living room wall and the only screen time is shared activity screen time with a parent on the weekends for an hour or so. Lots more board gaming, reading, talking, crafting, playing. Way more parental involvement required.
If there was some way to limit YouTube to specific channels and disable recommendations we might still allow it. Maybe you can do that with premium. In any case, we chose a household solution rather than trying to work in a technical solution.
I was pretty good at policing the YouTube content, but one day I came in and found my wife without a care in the world while my child was mimicking horrible YouTube behavior. Turned it off and never looked back.
Now my friend with an 8 year old is telling me how YouTube returned to his life. I’m not ready for that and instead trying to build a device that will pause time
I do exactly this by mirroring a list of channels to my NAS and serving it with Emby. It's not 100% "educational" material; there's Dude Perfect and alongside Physics Girl, Bob Ross, Primitive Technology, and Technology Connections.
(My ancient wish that Google+ had created personas/facets crops up once again: there's a fair number of creators whose channels have some gold but which I won't add to the mirror because they have a bunch of unrelated content that is far more marginal. Some creators set up multiple topic-focuses channels or playlists but it's not the common case.)
I don't have a content block for youtube.com and the kids can still technically get there, but they know I don't want them going there and they know why.
There isn't a one-size-fits-all best practice. Every kid is different. Some can self-moderate; others can be ruined. Similar to gambling, alcohol, or other addictions.
Age is also a big factor. Entertaining your 2 year old with an iPad will probably lead to worse outcomes than for a 15-year-old.
Just because something worked for your kid -- that doesn't mean it will work for all kids. Hope this is obvious, yet nobody is stating it.
A library of great books, good games, craft and art materials, and a collection of musical instruments would have been the best thing for my kids I'm thinking. Screens just make them addicted and miserable.
I agree in principle, and one of the saddest things to see is the pile of all these wonderful diversions sitting ignored while Youtube plays. (See my other comment about how we have essentially banned Youtube in my house for this reason).
It's a difficult path, and not for everyone, but I think it's the right one for people willing to do it.
Are these mutually exclusive? If those items are around, and kids are taught how to make use of them, they will use them. Restricting screen time might be a necessity but it's less of a sore spot if it can easily be substituted and the habits are ingrained.
I suppose OP (and you) are not "internet addicted", and I'm pretty sure it's not because someone is working hard to keep you from the internet, but because you have other things in your life that you enjoy or understand are critically needed.
Kids aren't that different. We might need to push them first so they discover new things and find what they like, but they'll definitely come back to you to go hiking if it they had a blast the last time.
I'm not sure it's really "put in the work", and I like a lot your "actively parenting" part. The crux is really to have fun with your kid, and if it's fun they'll do it again, and again, and again. And they also have a sense of responsibility, letting them fail and be remorseful when they didn't do their due and watched youtube instead is often a good enough strategy.
So what do you do in this case?
They've never used an "app".
They have books, blocks, Legos, dolls, coloring pages, and a ton of random trinkets to play creatively. It probably requires being more hands on than when you can use the TV set as a babysitter, but it's well worth it so far.
I realize this is easier for me than most as my oldest is only 13, we homeschool, and we live in a very rural area with high community engagement. Meaning the social pressure to be online just isn't currently there.
Once they have a job and can buy their own devices they can do what they please. Hopefully, the disdainful tone I use when explaining social media companies to them fully sinks in by then.
Yeah kids are famous for doing everything their parents say ;)
I feel like if I come across too 1950s it'll just make it seem too forbidden/cool. I mean just look how naughty those hippies were.
I try to help my son understand and cultivate these virtues. He is 11, and is home-schooled.
Practically, right now we use several exercises specifically intended to combat screen attachment:
1) he is supposed to set a timer when getting on his iPad (totally up to him, but HE chooses to use it)
2) two regular days a week when he can Skype with his best friends (looks forward to the social time more than the game time)
3) typically a once-a-month screen detox for 3 to 7 days (no screen time, period.)
The most effective exercise is the screen detox. Within a day his attitude changes for the better: he practices his piano more eagerly, he acts sweeter, he finds "real" things to get into, and is more creative than usual. We're doing a detox right now; he learned backgammon from a friend at his chess club yesterday, made a backgammon board this morning before school, and taught me how to play when I got home from work. ...typical example of what happens during a detox. In the summer it was usually things like playing football or collecting bugs and lizards outside that happened when the iPad was put on the shelf.
I'm ashamed (and humbled) to say that I need a detox more than he does. But I grew up not being taught to develop virtue, and I have a lot of self-correction that I'm working through. Setting my son up to not have to deal with addiction in the first place is something I can give him that I wish I had been given. His generation also has (soon to be "Saint") Carlo Acutis as a role model.
I need to set up a Pi-hole, and filter out adult website URLs for our home internet.
Kid wants to play video games? Have them create their own video game before playing other video games
Addicted to TikTok? Have them create their own videos and channel before watching other peoples channels
Addicted to the internet? Have them create their own websites before having them see other people's websites
The foundations of addiction rely on the mind creating cycles of dependence on a single activity due to a lack of finding the same dopamine rush in other known activities. So if they understand what is going on behind the scenes that actually results in the dopamine rush, they can find healthier alternatives. They will do this automatically since dopamine with understanding = freedom
Brutal
> The foundations of addiction rely on the mind creating cycles of dependence on a single activity due to a lack of finding the same dopamine rush in other known activities. So if they understand what is going on behind the scenes that actually results in the dopamine rush, they can find healthier alternatives.
to what you've come up with? How does creating your own video make them understand what is going on behind the scenes when watching a video and how that creates a dopamine rush? Absolutely, creating your own videos is much more satisfying but I don't see how that relates to better understanding when watching a Tiktok feed.
But some people need it more than the others.
In my opinion the lonelier and/or unhealthier and/or poorer and/or less purposeful and/or more physically / mentally trapped somebody is; the likelier for them to be addicted to the internet (or to other things that can give them a sense of an escape from their reality, or just hope.)
I think before thinking about anything else you should think about what better can you do for your child regarding those matters.
Personally, we have a four year old and an almost-two year old, and they're watching a Leapfrog show on the TV as we speak. We limit their access to screens, but realistically there are times when they're really useful.
A big part of this is filling their time with endeavors they enjoy. Sports in particular are a big part of their life. They have been set on a path that they could be pros and make a career out of it shoukd they choose to and if injuries dont grt in the way.
You will be surprised how quickly tv and screen time goes away when the entire family is busy. There is no downtime during the week except when perhaps commuting - otherwise its light play with toys.
When other parents hear about our kids demanding schedules and training regimes, some are shocked. But we were also kids. We were full of energy. Kids love running. kids love learning, coaches , teammates, nownfriends. Its that or screentime.
Of course, this demands high sacrifice from parents. Its expensive. Its busy. You have to have nannies to shuttle kids from school to training or else have a renote job that allows you to commute midday.
Its work. Its not for everyone. There is no secret sauce. Just work, looking around, and knowing at the end of The day having the satisfaction that your kids are turning out quite alright. Then starting the next day, knowing that the weakest in this balancing act is you, the parent... not the kids who dont complain and are all smiles.
At our house, we have 6 children ranging in ages from 7-12 (3 of them are mine). No cell phones allowed Mon-Fri, but on Saturday and Sunday, they can have their phones from 2pm-9pm. We sleep at 9pm everyday. Sometimes during the week I'll let them watch a movie. Also, if they want to use their phone for learning something new like oragami, a piano tune or how to draw, then I let them use it for an hour or however long they need it as long as they are responsible.
The result is lots of imaginative play time like fashion shows, disco parties and pretend school. There is a lot of time for studying and playing instruments. All the kids were "A" students this last quarter.
I tell myself I need it for background music then before.I know it I'm binge watching comedy routines I've seen 10 times before.
Honestly if you're going well enough, your kid potentially mimicking you shouldn't be such an issue. There are some stuff to consider regarding language aquisition, fine motor skills etc. for really small kids, but them looking at youtube wont doom their life if you've covered the other bases.
If you feel it will become a real issue, the path of course would be to look at how you want your own life to be different, move in that direction and bring your kid along. I've had friends who quit their job and moved to another town to realign with how they wanted their life to be after they had their kid, so it can be an option.
My eldest just started elementary school. She doesn't own her own devices so any videos or fun stuff on the tablet is earned through a reward system and usually we're around to ensure she doesn't go off the rails. I did uninstall YouTube on the ipad. Now she has only PBS kids, purchased videos from iTunes and the likes.
No netflix at home...any movies, tv shows is rented from the library - which also they can watch w/ reward system. Living room is full of toys, activities books etc for things they can pick up and easily do. It's not in a dedicated "toy room" where they play out of sight. Though, the living room does end up being messy all the time.
My daughter already asks for things she sees from other kids, like piercings and toys...I'm able to say no now but it'll be a hard battle in the future when kids at her school or on her bus watch TikTok or browse social media.
Anyway, my son is 7 and that probably won't work too much longer. We generally don't have imposed limits but if it's getting pretty late we'll just kill the internet on the device. This works pretty well because he plays all games on Xbox Play, mainly Fortnite. I honestly don't care if he sits and plays for hours because I did that around his age. The problem is, games were much harder back then because you played something like Contra 3 and lost and you basically wanted to throw the controller in the garbage. Now games are too easy.
He has been discouraged to play the Solo/Duos/Trio's in Fortnite because it can be a hard game. He mainly plays the "custom games" now and if he's on too long I'll just connect and go into the game and beat him a bunch of times until he's discouraged and turns it off. haha.
I don't know what to do when he's older, because I had no time limits on anything. I just generally balanced it out myself
One of the things kids seem to be is really really curious. I know for some this is obvious but in my kids and other kids in their cohort lots of questions lots of "why?" It is possible this is related to the idea of novelty being the thing that triggers the pleasure center and "addicts" you or it could be something else entirely. My wife and I had a goal to make sure that TV wasn't habitual.
For us, the thing was the kids needed something to do when we weren't doing something as a family or other activities. A lot of our peers would let them watch TV, we bought a lot of books (and taught them at an early age how to use the library which was, quite fortunately, within biking distance of our house).
I didn't think too much about the difference but it really stood out at a birthday party my daughter attended. The "parent in charge" of the birthday needed to set things up and switched on the TV. Nearly all of the kids gravitate to the TV and sat quietly watching it. My daughter wandered over to the bookshelf and saw a book, pulled off the shelf and started reading it. The difference was distinct enough for the parent to make a point to tell me this series of events when I picked up my kid. They were surprised that a kid would rather "read" than "watch TV".
I don't know if the right word was "rather" though, I just know that my kids had learned that an easy way to entertain yourself when there was nothing else to do was to read. I felt strongly that reading was "habit" rather than "preference."
I can't verify that of course, and later when World of Warcraft came out we all spent a lot of time playing it, but by that time not having access to external content wasn't a huge problem for the kids.
Of course setting some limits on how much / how often helps a bit, and frank discussions about what too much of an addictive thing does to you.
Our youngest is developmentally delayed and will absolutely ignore any guidelines and follow the path of least resistance / most enticement, so their bedroom connection runs through a proxy running Squid [1] where I've whitelisted school and certain entertainment (that took a bit of time running Telerik Fiddler[2] to gather the many domains necessary for the whitelist)
Spotify was a bit of a problem, again with our youngest who went straight for the podcasts with the most adult content, which Spotify gleefully recommended the first moment we turned the service on. Could never find a way to turn podcasts off - never wanted them.
We run our own Emby[3] server that everyone has access to with curated music tv and movies (and also have the usual streaming video services, but those are reserved for common areas).
Looked at other options like walled garden family services (e.g. Amazon Kindle Fires with subscription), but there seems to only be content ranging up to ~12 year old tastes.
[0] https://support.opendns.com/hc/en-us/articles/228006487-Fami... [1] http://www.squid-cache.org/ [2] https://www.telerik.com/fiddler [3] https://emby.media/
My advice is to look at your own life first. If you (or the other parent) have trouble with getting addicted to things, obsessive behaviours, body dysmorphism etc you might want to take a more judicious approach with your kids.
I think there are also some things that go without saying:
- Don’t let kids sacrifice sleep, so no devices in the bedroom at night.
- Be extremely careful with tween+ girls and visual social media. Restrict usage, educate and discuss a lot, and beyond that make a special effort to give them attention, do fun stuff, let them know they are special and important and valued during the vulnerable years.
- Boys and pornography. Need to talk to them about it. I don’t know how to approach this, I’ve got about a decade to work it out.
I acquired that skill at the end of my teenage years, so she's already ahead!
I don't allow social media though, as that is undeniably toxic. Also attention span reducing tiktok is not allowed. They watch a lot of YouTube, and we watch stuff together sometimes. It is basically the TV of their generation and although some of the stuff they watch is mindless, some of it is informative and helps them develop useful skills.
Work from home made the situation worse as children see how parents spent at least 8 hours in front of computers.
I want them to use technology but it needs to be controlled so that they aren’t overexposed to things before they’re ready.
I think I’m going to try and structure it so that they mirror my experience. Start off with simpler devices like consoles and basic programming. Wean them onto it so that they don’t start out with a billion terabytes of information and porn being fed into them before they can even read.
I bring up ADHD symptoms because a lot of online tech leans on the short attention span of kids.
In my own experience, focusing on this has had a small but noticeable effect on temperament around tech.
The other side of the puzzle I think is helping kids with confidence and setting their own boundaries. If they're too young for that, they're too young for tech.
Secondly, stop using those services yourself and take every opportunity to tell them how much crap they are and how they should not be used.
They will listen to you since you yourself are not using them. If you use them and tell them not to, of course it's not going to work.
Once social media is out of the picture, you've taken care of the worst crap. Rest is incremental and you can build on the above.
Use pihole, other DNS filtering services to help filter other services.
1) for some of reason, blocking YT is not working on network. I need to figure it out. This problem could be limited to me.
2) YT is used by various educational sites to just w videos. So, if I block YT, they stop working. Note: I’m not referring to visiting YouTube.com directly, but embedded videos in other sites. So, this makes it hard to block YT.
What I have done instead is not installed the YouTube app on the TV and settop box. This has somewhat controlled YT use, but not fully unfortunately.
If we can’t do that I email our teacher. I would rather them miss homework than unban YouTube. Schools need to stop using addictionware sites to deliver videos.
Take the collective entertainment media engagement numbers and the fact that adults are no longer constrained by supervision in this regard and extrapolate the impact on hundreds of millions of adults times ~10 years for many billion experience-days under the influence of SM engagement and you'll get the perfect description of modern societal ills.
I am considering getting rid of consoles and just getting them steam decks instead as their first computers and then do some modding with them.
But the games, videos and internet are very addictive: when I was young it was just the dopamine hit of playing a game. But now it is culture. Friends at school are on Roblox, Discord etc. This makes it more challenging and more fights and begging etc.
A hard one. As a parent a small part of the role is to be the mean unpopular person sometimes ;-)
Yes technology will be there, but it’ll aid and further the other activities, NOT become an addition in itself.
One thing we did to further that is send the kids to a private school of like-minded parents. We have a robotics club, but no networked computers outside of that in the school. Might sound old school (it is), but if all the kids have are friends without technology, they won’t use it
Instead, maybe introduce them to alternatives that are worth being addicted to. And, lead by example. Try to find something that you and they would enjoy doing together.
I think keeping kids active while denying certain activities is really normal and doesn't result in rebellion when done right.
I have noticed children (below 3) DO NOT prefer tablets/phones. If you give a two-year a tablet, wait until they are completed engaged and ask them "wanna go outside?" they will forget the tablet. Kids always prefer to play, but when parents do/can not spend time with them, they will happily find entertainment elsewhere.
I haven't tested this with children above 3, but I suspect it is the same up to 12.
our internet goes on for them at 6am, turns off at 7am. They have to be dressed, ready for school, brushed teeth etc, before they start at 6am. I have never had to wake my kids up for school in their lives.
They get internet again at night from 7:30-8:30 once all their work is done (reading a chapter in a book, math one grade level higher, foreign language, music). They function as a team so they all need to be done before any of them can start doing electronics.
When I was a kid (12-17) I was addicted to one of the first online graphical role playing games in the country (80s PLATO system - avatar). My dad was a CS professor so I had easy access to the network terminals. He would never have one in our house as he had phd students drop out as a result of being addicted to the game. He constantly reminded me it was better to write the game than to be addicted to the games.
https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/11/game-124-avatar-1979...
At some point I just outgrew them and I periodically try to play them, but they are so shallow compared to real life I cant get addicted again.
I think as long as kids have plenty of "real life" activities that they love, they will be able to enjoy the internet in moderation.
The kids that really struggle are the ones whose parents dont help them to cultivate real world passions and success so they just spend all their free time online.
But that makes us more equipped to parent it. Moderation, appealing alternatives, technical prowess, modeling healthy habits, access in a public/supervised environment, etc.
I do wonder what the future will look like for parental controls and big tech. Especially in the USA.
When they are older, computer time will be allowed, but the pursuit must be creative in nature.
I hated it but I quickly became one of the best musicians in our school band.
If you want kids be interested in others things, be an example and show them.
Beside of this, talk with kids about how internet works and what threats are there. I'm sure most of HN users are informed enough in this topic.
We didn't start time screen time for our kid until ~6. We required a log entry to be written so it's purpose driven, not mindless usage.
She can spend days on IG reels. I don't know what to do.
I attempted to delete all my socials but LinkedIn to set a healthy example but it's for nothing.
None of the five ever asked for a phone.
Forget to pay the ISP bill.
NOTHING BUT PHYSICAL BOOKS, LPS, FLIP PHONES, E-INK E-READERS, AND PORN MAGAZINES!!!!
After getting dumped as a teen, I slipped into a dangerous, self-loathing depression. When I could not find the motivation to call up my friends or organize anything, I could at least message them on AOL Instant Messenger. When my offline peers didn't share my interests, I could find peers that did online - in IRC and in forums. I could lurk even if I couldn't be bothered to talk. Games, music, programming, and technology allowed me to distract myself from the worst of my thoughts and rumination, even when my studies couldn't. I could vent behind a psuedonum instead of worrying those closest to me. My self-found mentors in technology spanned the globe, scattered across the timezones, giving me guidance and new perspectives, despite being hidden behind online psuedonyms without means of other contact.
It perhaps wasn't the healthiest coping mechanism for depression, nor the healthiest relationship with technology, but there are far worse alternatives. And when intelligent, well meaning family labeled me a computer/internet addict when my grades suffered - and largely took away said coping mechanism with incredibly strict limits on my use of technology when I'd previously been given near unlimited free reign - they did not improve the situation or provide better substitutes. They instead made things much worse. The last thing a moody depressed teen needs is severe social isolation, the destruction of their hobbies, and a whole bunch of previously occupied time suddenly be free and in need of filling, when the filler of default is to ruminate.
When I failed to convince them to ease up, I did pick up some new hobbies to distract myself - such as arguing and rebellion, and plotting to break free from their control and gain my independence when I finally came of age. Years(?) later, they eventually backtracked, realizing their meddling wasn't improving things, and would only lead to me being eventually estranged.
I guess my main takeaway here is to warn against assuming addiction is the fundamental problem. It can be a symptom. It can be an imperfect coping mechanism - an attempt at self medication. Limits can be reasonable, but going cold turkey can be incredibly disruptive. It might not kill like going cold turkey with alcohol or some drugs can - but that doesn't mean it can't cause damage.
---
I still don't have a perfectly healthy relationship with technology, but it's okay to have some vices, and I've found some healthier activities. While you'll not find me in a gym, coworkers helped me pick up the habit of walking to lunch. Movie and board game nights give me an excuse to socialize more meaningfully offline while having fun - in part, ironically, by getting back in regular contact with people online with similar interests. I cook more. I now get paid to program, and lean towards leaving work at work. I eat with family from time to time.
I game significantly less now, simply because I gamed enough to get largely bored of it. At least I learned some about teamwork, coordination, and delegation in the process.
I'm not particularly motivated, but I'm at least independent. Pathologically independent to the point of automatically rejecting most familial help, but independent nonetheless.
I've been procrastinating on initiating and hosting more events to further improve my social life, but I'll get there eventually.